The FarFetched and the Faithful
by Ophelia's Flood
Summary: It's been a year since Luke and Lorelai got together, and though he may have forgotten about his exgirlfriends, they haven't forgotten about him. When they meet each other, Star's Hollow behind them,old grudges are laid to rest, and old loves reawakened.


This story had been a lovely experience for me, an experiment with a style other than that of my normal wordy descriptions. More dialogue went into this story than my entire former writing career, but I love it. I'd hazard a rough guess to say it takes place sometime in season 5; but in New York City instead of Star's Hollow, and with the two people you might not expect.

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Rachel leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes, shutting out for a moment the brief golden glimmer of candlelight that lit the stylish chrome-and-onyx apartment. She let herself be entirely still except for her fingers; they twitched, spinning the stem of the wineglass in her hand. She could feel the liquid movement of the martini through the glass, could feel the coldness of it, and smiled in pleasure at the contrast between the drink and the soft heat of the candles.

She cherished this time, adored the night every week when she broke tradition, when she allowed herself to relax; when she went against her own nature, and allowed herself to be still; when she broke her most sacred law, and engaged herself in memories. This was the only time that she was permitted to relive the events that had shaped her, and she treasured it, for she found that living and whirling and spinning faster and faster as she had always done left no time for reminisces.

She had long been in the habit of giving herself short breaks, periods in which she allowed herself to remember, because constantly being on the move had given her a terror of forgetting even the slightest thing. She knew from experience that boarding a flight to Turkey and, halfway there, realizing that your camera is still in New York, is a frightful thing; so she allowed herself, occasionally, to look back at old photographs, to call old friends, to remember old loves. But before, it had always been a quick, unplanned thing, a spontaneous spin through her past that came so infrequently she was always afraid she would never have time to do it again. And that made it more fun; knowing that this might be your last time around was a law she loved and lived by.

Only recently had her trips down the trite boulevard of memory lane become a thing of ritual, in a set time and a set place, forced out of its normal pattern by a dazzling glory of coincidence. She remembered how it had come about; remembered the frantic flight from Star's Hollow, the bewildering year of travel and tears, then the final plane landing, the energy that coursed through her the minute she had stepped off the plane and into New York's haze of fog and smoke and neon lights.

There was a slight noise from the world beyond, a dragging of a door over scratch-proof linoleum, a click as someone turned the lights on, then another as they decided they liked the room better with them off. There was the slight patter of expensive heels snapping their way across a hardwood floor; the clinking of ice as it was poured into a glass, then a soft sigh and silence.

"I hereby call this meeting to order," said a high-pitched, musical voice, carrying across the stillness of the apartment. "Tell me what you're thinking."

Rachel opened her eyes, smiling as she gazed into the face of the woman sitting across from her, jealously admiring the close-cropped, candle-lit red hair in a back corner of her mind. "I was thinking of how we met," she said lazily, shifting so that one arm dangled over the edge of her chair, the other carefully cradling her martini. "How we got this little society started."

Nicole smiled in answer to Rachel's grin. They both knew the story, but they were going to recount it anyway, because it was one of the laws of these little meetings of theirs, that every memory must be spoken in its entirety.

"I had just gotten to New York," Rachel began, sipping her drink, "and was thrilled by the bigness and brightness of it all. I wanted a break from wide open expanses and small towns, so I decided giving city life a try."

"And because you are still ridiculously optimistic," Nicole answered, "You decided that you were settling down once and for all and wanted to rent an apartment."

"But the guy who I was renting from was a jerk, and shoved lots of legal jargon in my face which I didn't understand in the slightest."

"So you called a lawyer."

"And got the most unexpected surprise of my life – and believe me, that's saying something."

They paused for a moment, smiling, and Rachel twisted her glass around to feel the olive swirl in circles against the glass against her fingers.

"We had our first meeting," Nicole continued, "And I asked some preliminary get-to-know-the-customer questions, which seem personal and intimate but are actually always the same."

"And I answered half of them truthfully, half with lies I made up to make my life more interesting."

"Which you didn't need, because as it turns out I found you very interesting indeed."

"And you were able to get past the fact that you couldn't have cared less about my life – "

"– to ask where you were from."

Rachel laughed, a soft chuckle, and waited as Nicole drained her glass in three long draughts, observing lazily the patterns of candlelight like molten warmth flickering across the windows. "And of course I couldn't tell you where I was really from, because I didn't trust lawyers, and because I'd been to so many places that I was starting to forget where I really was from myself. So I told you where I'd most recently been –"

There was an expected pause, and they chorused together, "Star's Hollow."

"And you got really quiet and you had this strange look on your face," Rachel continued.

"Because I was shocked."

"Your mouth hung open for a minute."

"It did not! I am always very professional with my clients."

"Right."

"Well, at any rate," Nicole continued, glaring haughtily down her nose at Rachel in mock disdain, "I was interested. And I told you that I'd recently been there myself, and I had been transferred to another office that my firm owned."

"Which got _me_ interested, because Star's Hollow is a town that is small to the point of claustrophobia, so I probably would have heard of any strangers hanging around. So I asked you what had happened there, and you immediately looked uncomfortable."

"With good reason!"

"And you resisted all my questions."

"But finally –"

"With _much_ prying –"

"I told you that I had had a relationship there, and that it had failed. That I had been divorced."

"Which only got me more interested, because a stranger is big news in Star's Hollow, but a divorce is a week's worth of headlines and several thousand dollars on Miss Patty's phone bill."

"So you started pressuring me to tell you who I had been dating – which was really none of your business."

"Hey, I'm a small town girl. It's my job to make everything my business."

"Please! The _last_ thing you are is a small town girl."

"Well, I was at some time in my life, or we wouldn't be having this conversation."

"I guess you're right," Nicole grinned, raising her glass in a perfunctory toast. "So it went that our conversation –"

"More like a train wreck, really –"

" – Our conversation passed through several intimate, embarrassing, and just plain ridiculous subjects, before we finally managed to worm our way through to the one thing we had in common –"

" – Besides a desperate desire to wring Taylor's miserable neck?"

"No, that's not just us. That's a common human instinct of self-defense. Every person in the world feels that," Nicole chuckled. "No, the real thing we had in common was – and is – of course, Luke."

"Luke," Rachel echoed, lifting her glass into the air. "To flannel!"

Nicole echoed her gesture. "To baseball caps!"

"To the master of the monosyllable!"

"To the Duke of Denial!"

"To memories."

"To Luke," they chorused, clinking glasses, draining their drinks down the ice that rattled and chimed like the wedding bells of a faraway time. Rachel got up to refill the glasses, momentarily mesmerized by the grace of the clear liquid arching like a melting rainbow as it poured from the bottleneck. She returned to her seat, handing a glass across to Nicole, who did not drink, instead stared over the rim at the woman across from her, who stared intently back.

"So we vowed," she started, deliberately leaving the sentence hanging.

"To form this little society," Rachel cut in.

"Once a week, for as long as we could,"

"Until you were transferred again –"

"—or until you got restless –"

"To let our memories roam free for just one night,"

"And to find some peace."

There was moment of ringing silence, as the familiar tale, a story that had become a tradition that had become a sacred ritual, drew to a close. Rachel leaned back in her chair, wordlessly; there were nights when not a single thing was spoken between them, when they simply remained looking at each other until the clock moved a whispered inch as it had done for the past year, and Nicole got up and left and Rachel blew the candles out. But tonight was not to be one of those nights.

"You know," Nicole said thoughtfully, now twirling her glass between her fingers in imitation of her friend, "Technically, we're rivals. Two women who both loved the same man, no matter how briefly. We should be fighting with each other. You know, scratching, biting, slapping, the whole thing."

"And instead we sit here reminiscing like two buddies from the good old days," Rachel replied, grinning again. Her expression of mirth faded into one of philosophical contemplation, and she tapped her foot sharply against the floor, as if coming to a revelation. "But even then," she mused, "Luke just isn't the kind of guy you fight over."

"Really? And why is that?"

"Because there's no way you can possibly win," she replied simply. "When Luke gives his heart to someone, he gives his entire self, mind, body, and soul, and that's eternally binding. It isn't like some guys who are flighty and fickle, half in love with six women and a crush on the side. That isn't Luke. He wasn't made that way. And you can tell just by looking at him, that if the person he's given his soul to isn't you, then nothing you do or say will change that. There isn't a catfight in the world that could make Luke change his mind."

"Amen," Nicole intoned solemnly, and the two women clinked glasses again. They did that quite often; so often, in fact, that the glasses used for these meetings always had chips along the brim when Rachel put them away.

"You know something?" Nicole asked softly, "You're absolutely right. I've always known that, I guess, but I never knew how to put it into words, that there was always something about Luke that I was never quite able to reach."

"Yeah, well, I've been a lot of places," Rachel sighed. "And going a lot of places means leaving a lot of places behind. I don't like to remember things, I don't like to dwell on things, but I don't like to forget things, either, so I've gotten used to looking at the heart of things, at remembering the essence and the core so I don't have to remember anything else."

"Hmm." Nicole's mouth quirked up at the corners as she considered the prospect. "The Reader's Digest version of Luke."

"I suppose you could call it that, yes," Rachel replied, giggling into her martini. "Instant Luke."

"Mmm." Nicole closed her eyes for a moment, leaning back in the chair as Rachel had done, savoring the night around her, listening to the roar of the city and feeling appreciatively the heat of the candles that filled the dark spaces of the unlit room. Her eyes suddenly snapped open again, as something occurred to her with the force of lightning. "Oh, that reminds me!" she exclaimed.

"What? That you've been keeping some Instant Luke around and we can add flannel and get a fully made diner owner right here in my own home?"

"No. I had a meeting with some clients today."

"And?"

"And – well, you kind of had to be there. It was a man and a woman, and the guy was Lukish – you know, handsome in that gruff way –"

" – with a hint of little-lost-puppy-dog at the same time –" Rachel giggled.

"And you could tell he wasn't much of a romantic, but he had that reserved-ness, that holding back because he puts everything he has into things that he loves and nothing into things that he doesn't. And here's the weird part – the woman with him was this blonde bimbo kind of a girl, the new-age Barbie doll with one of those ridiculous leather miniskirts –"

"Hey, I've always wanted one of those!" Rachel yelped, then relaxed at Nicole's horrified look. "Just kidding. Continue."

"So anyway, the woman with him was a complete idiot. She's one of the ones where you can just look at the eyes and tell there's nothing going on behind them."

"Mmhmm. Those drive me crazy. But are you sure they were together? She sounds young, she might have been his daughter or something. Or a sister. You'd be shocked what can come out of a single gene pool."

"No, they were together," Nicole said adamantly. "They were married. I saw the rings."

"Blech." Rachel made a face.

"But the thing was," Nicole continued hesitantly, "He didn't love her. I could see it. It was _obvious_. He didn't listen to a thing she said, he never looked right at her, he never said a thing to her, he flinched whenever she touched him. It was like it pained him to acknowledge she was there. And it made me wonder – what had made him marry a girl like that, when his heart was so obviously with someone else."

There was a prolonged silence, pause of contemplation, a slight trembling of fear that disrupted the jolly air of the evening. The city roared and pressed on the windows in the form of a night like dark water that longed to extinguish the candles and their breath; and inside, they were silent, letting the rhythm of passing cars replace the hum of conversation, each lost within her own thoughts.

Finally, Nicole dared to break the impasse with a tremulous whisper, a cautious murmur. "Do you think – do you think we were like that?"

Rachel cocked her head to the side, watching the other woman, with sharp, bright eyes. "Like what?"

"Like – I don't know. Like the kind of person who would beat some guy into marrying her. Like the kind of person who would force a guy to do something like that. Like the 'other woman' who the guy marries because he doesn't have any other option."

Rachel stayed silent for a long time, unmoving, her eyes never leaving Nicole, watching the lawyer fidget restlessly in her chair, tap her foot in sharp staccato bursts against the hard floor, twirl her glass in one hand and a lock of hair in the other.

"No," she said finally, slowly. "No, I don't think we were like that. I don't think we could be. We wouldn't have it in us."

"I could!" Nicole burst out suddenly, viciously, with an anger that Rachel had not expected. "I did! Luke didn't want to marry me, but he did anyway –"

"That is _not_ the same thing," Rachel interrupted, still speaking softly, but with a strength and confidence that silenced her friend's rambling. "You made a mistake. A _mutual_ mistake. And you fixed it, didn't you? You divorced him. That's what matters, that you fixed it."

There was another pause, another beat of silence as Rachel's words died away, taking with them the tension that had built up within the small circle of candlelight. The anger in the air faded, wavered, then was snapped and dispersed altogether by Rachel's sudden grin. "So I've been trying to think of a name."

Nicole blinked, nonplussed. "A name?"

"You know, a name for us. For this." Rachel waved her hand in a gesture that encompassed the two of them, the room, and the entire world beyond. "This little Luke Lovers club of ours."

"Ah. I see." Nicole allowed herself to be pulled into the mood of gaiety that Rachel was trying to reestablish. "And what have you come up with so far?"

"Not much," Rachel admitted. "The best option was the DBL – the Dumped By Luke club."

"Interesting," Nicole grinned, rubbing her chin in mock contemplation. "But we need something short and snappy, I think. And no acronyms – I get enough of those at work."

"Fair enough," Rachel agreed. "All right, then – the Discarded?"

"Too negative," Nicole dismissed the suggestion with a wave of her hand. "The Pathetic?"

"Ha ha. Those With Nothing Better To Do?"

"I don't think we're really getting anywhere with this. Do you have anything else?"

"Nope. All out," Rachel grinned, taking a sip of her drink, feeling a warm buzz beginning to build up inside her. "I still think DBL is our best option, all dislike of acronyms aside."

"Hmm." Nicole fell silent for a moment, considering. "It has its merits," she consented, deep in thought.

"That's what I was thinking. It's fairly short, descriptive –"

"Although how descriptive is it, really?"

"What?" Rachel looked up at that, puzzled. "What do you mean? Why else did we first become friends, if we hadn't both been dumped by Luke?"

"No, no, that's not what I mean," Nicole murmured, gesturing vaguely with her hands, trying to form the air into the words to express what she felt. "I mean, we stopped seeing Luke. But neither of us was really _dumped _by Luke." Met with only a blank look from Rachel, she hurriedly continued. "I mean, you left, right? And so did I. Pretty much of my own free will. And Luke didn't exactly force you out either."

"No, I suppose not," Rachel replied, frowning, trying to grasp the nuances of Nicole's meaning. "I guess you're right, Luke didn't exactly dump us. He wouldn't have the heart for it, big old softie that he is. But he was in love with another woman while he was seeing me, and I consider that pretty well dumped."

"But that's just it! Luke didn't dump us. We left him because we knew that he was cheating on us before he even knew himself. We dumped ourselves, in a sense, because we saw through all the stupid defense mechanisms that he'd put up around himself."

"What are we, then? The Disillusioned?" Rachel asked wryly, swallowing another mouthful of martini.

"No…" Nicole said slowly, solemnly, eyes narrowed, moments away from a revelation. "We're not the Disillusioned…." Her expression grew solemn, and Rachel could almost see the fusing of many dreams and emotions into a single conviction that blazed out through her eyes. Nicole raised her glass. "We are the Faithful."

Rachel snorted. "Where on earth did you get that?" she asked skeptically. "The Faithful? If what we've been saying is true then we both dumped Luke and ran away as fast as we could. How is that being faithful? I think you've had a little too much alcohol, my friend."

"No," Nicole said softly, her voice quickening with the excitement of a monumental conclusion about to be reached. "No, let me explain. We are the two most faithful people in the world right now, the two people in the world who have done Luke the biggest favor."

"Really?" Rachel asked, sipping her martini, interested in spite of herself. "Go on."

"Luke is the kind of guy – he's good at reading people, at knowing what they're thinking. He's good at figuring people out," Nicole began eagerly.

"Damn spooky sometimes," Rachel murmured into her drink.

"And he always knows how to make things right. It's what he does. He always knows how to fix every broken heart – except his own!"

"Don't we all?" Rachel quipped.

"_Any_way," Nicole continued pointedly, "_we_ are the ones who helped him figure out his own heart. We're the ones who helped him see what he really wanted, the ones who helped to make him happy."

"We removed the distractions," Rachel added.

"Yes! Exactly! We removed ourselves from the picture once we broke through all Luke's stupid denial defenses. We removed the distractions. We opened the way for him – for him and Lorelai."

Silence fell suddenly, with the deafening force of a thundercrack. Nicole stopped almost mid-word, the breath fleeing her body as the echo of her excited chattering rebounded back to her form the walls and the darkness. She did not dare to move. She had spoken the sacred name, the unmentionable name, the name that the two of them had somehow managed to avoid uttering in the six brief months of their friendship. They had been afraid to give it voice, for fear of how themselves – or the other woman – might react; and in her excitement at reaching the heart of her past, she had let it slip. She hung her head in something close to shame.

"For him and Lorelai," Rachel said softly, but it was not angry, or accusing, or menacing; instead her voice was filled with wonder, and her expression was one of astounding peace. She glanced down at the floor, and when she looked up again her eyes were bright with a childish amazement. "I thought that would be so hard to say," she nearly-whispered, as though she was pronouncing something holy. "But it isn't. It's – _right_. It feels right. It _sounds_ right. Luke and Lorelai. It sounds right."

"Sure," Nicole murmured, staring at the floor, her voice sounding not entirely convinced. There was a shadow over her face; some old hatred or hesitation chained her, held her back from the realization that had come to Rachel with the force of lightning. "Sounds great."

"Come on," Rachel said coaxingly, fixing Nicole with a hard, bright stare. "We want Luke to be happy, don't we?"

"Yes." the response was immediate, heartfelt, almost defensive. "Yes. Of course we do. He deserves that."

"And would he every have been happy with anyone but her?" Rachel asked gently. "You know it never would have worked, Nicole; he was never really happy with you. He was never really happy with me," she added hastily, to take the unmeant sting out of the words. "You know this is right for him. You know that _we_ were wrong for him. So are you going to hate him for it?"

"No." That, too was an immediate, instinctive response, as natural as an exhaled breath. Nicole looked up again, a small smile flickering across her face. "I could never hate Luke. No one could. It's humanly impossible."

"And do you really want to hate Lorelai?" Rachel asked softly, coaxingly, seeing the sullenness, the resentment in her friend's face and knowing that it would have to be destroyed before she would find any peace in the constant bombardment of the world.

"No," Nicole said softly, but it was a forceful answer, as though she had torn the word from her own heart and flung it angrily, defiantly, out into the open air. Rachel smiled and nodded knowingly, watching as the other woman's expression of anger faded and melted into the exhilaration of revelation, then into the astounding calm of knowing that all is right with the world. Nicole smiled and raised her glass.

"To us," she said joyfully, "the ones who were more faithful to Luke than he ever was to himself." Rachel smiled in answer, clinked glasses and drank deeply, as her friend did the same.

There was another stretch of silence, a moment when there was no more to be said that was not expressed by the wail and roar of the city, by the darkness beyond the window pressing on the glass, by the candlelight flickering and softening the edges of the world. It was a moment of reflection, a moment when the two women stared at the candles and at each other and felt the deep warmth of the fire and the caress of memories that were too precious to be forgotten. It was a moment when the entire color-bleeding whirlwind of two mutual pasts was crushed together, relived and shaped into the gruff, flannel-clad presence that seemed to hover always between them like a ghost.

Rachel closed her eyes and spoke.

"I have a proposal to submit to the Society," she announced, in ringing tones that filled the darkness with vibrations. Nicole inclined her head, acknowledging.

Rachel opened her eyes, and the candles shivered in a sudden breeze, and shadows danced eerily across her face. "I propose that we forever banish Lorelai Gilmore from our ranks. She is never to be allowed to join our Society, she is never to be allowed to come to our meetings, and the members of this club will do all within their power to prevent it."

"I second that motion," Nicole said solemnly, all joking gone. "I hereby declare that, no matter the circumstances, Lorelai Gilmore must never be admitted to our sisterhood."

A small smile returned to Rachel's face, and there was a visible relaxation of the tension in the air. "Because this is the club of those who have been dumped by Luke –"

"And we will not allow Lorelai to be dumped by Luke," Nicole said flatly.

"We will not allow her to throw our noble sacrifice away," Rachel said loftily, laughter in her voice and a glint of humor in her eye.

"Because how many chances at monosyllabic, flannel-clad diner owner does a girl get?" Nicole exclaimed.

"Exactly! And if we are to have been dumped, we shall not have been dumped in vain! All in favor?"

"Aye!" they chorused, and burst out laughing, a blessed release of the tension that solemnity had instilled in their gathering.

"I call as witnesses the entire population of Star's Hollow," Rachel cried, "Who have been waiting years and years for this day –"

"You mean that day," Nicole corrected. "About a year and half ago, to be exact."

"And to seal this pact," Rachel continued, ignoring her, "I extinguish this flame –" she snatched a candle from a nearby table and held it aloft, " – which will represent the presence of Lorelai Gilmore among our sisterhood." Rocked by a sudden peal of laughter, she held the candle up to her chin, watching as it flickered and faded.

Nicole laughed as well, and the two of them picked up the candles one by one and blew them all out. Nicole set the last one down on the hard, cold floor, and left, a joyful smile on her face.

Rachel's laughter faded and died. She returned to her chair, and sat in darkness for a long time, staring ahead into the depths of memory, starry-eyed.

She relaxed into her chair and allowed her eyes to close. When she opened them again, dried wax stained the floor and tables, her drink had spilled and left a stain on the living room carpet, and the sun was rising over the bustle of New York City.

She awoke slowly, smiling to think that, somewhere not so very far away, it rose over Lorelai and Luke and well.

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So, what did you think? Please, review! Did you like the new style? Should I stick with what I'm good at? Should I turn this into a full-fledged story (I've had some thoughts in that area). Oh, and if anyone thinks of a good name for their little society, let me know. Were they in character? Out? Did you even care?

I love the word ubiquitous. I used to know what it means, but then I forgot and just admired it for its utter pointlessness. Ubiquitous. Isn't that such a fun word?

Oh, and a little addendum to the readers of my other stories; I have only received two reviews on the new chapter of Sunflowers. Much as I would love to post, I'd really like to hold out for five or six reviews. Come on, people, it's not that hard! Sorry to be obnoxious, but, what can I say, I have no life.


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